We arrived here on 13th April after a 7 hour bus journey (via our reasonably luxurious tour group bus which we now have for 10 days) from Udaipur which also took in a visit to the Jain temple at Ranakpur along the way. The temple is one of the biggest and most important of the Jain religion. We enjoyed a very traditional Indian lunch here served on metal plates and eaten by hand. It didn't look that tasty but it most certainly was and it cost a grand total of 20p...

We arrived back in Mumbai on 9th April to begin a three week organised tour run by The Imaginative Traveller which takes us through Northern India and ends up in Kathmandu, Nepal at the end of the month. Having already spent over a week in Mumbai when we first arrived in India three and a half weeks ago we really couldn't be bothered exploring much of it again in the day we had here although Jo did go off on a mini sight-seeing tour with some of our other tr...

We arrived in Palolem via a 13 hour overnight train from Kerala, then a 1 1/2 hour bus ride so it wasn't the best of journeys, however this lovely beach resort made it well worth the trouble. Palolem is on the southern tip of Goa, a far less developed area than the Benidorm-lite places of the north. The beach is truly lovely, fringed with palm trees and is picture postcard material. As we've come right at the end of the season there are people around but it'...

Now this really was a treat. We read and heard great things about the Kerala backwaters before we got here and therefore booked up a two day, two night trip in Varkala. However, we weren't quite sure what to expect as you never are when booking up tours in 3rd world countries. Our first day (Sunday 2nd) started with a morning taxi ride around 40km north to Kollam where we boarded a boat to Allepey which was due to take all day. We were told by the guy w...

We arrived here on the 25th March after a less than lovely 32 hour train journey from Mumbai. It was our first experience of the Indian railways and whilst the view out of the window was pleasant, especially towards the end of the journey, and the food was just about edible, 32 hours is too long by anyone's standards especailly as it wasn't the cleanest carriage you will ever see. Things took a decided turn for the better when we reached Varkala, in the stat...